Imaging of highly turbid media by the absorption method

The results of a study on imaging that is based on the absorption method are presented. This method is based on attenuation measurements carried out in the presence of a sufficiently high absorption coefficient by the use of a continuous-wave source. The benefit of absorption on image quality comes from the strong attenuation of photons traveling along long trajectories. When the absorption coefficient is increased, the received energy decreases, but the mean path length of received photons decreases. The effect of increasing the absorption coefficient is similar to that of decreasing the gating time when the time-gating technique is used. Experimental results showed that the spatial resolution obtained with the absorption technique is similar to that obtained with the time-gating technique. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America